Vaclav Havel, from Heřmanice prison, June 26, 1982:
Dear Olga,
You may remember how upset I was that earthlings left such a mess on the moon, like a bunch of city people on a Sunday evening littering the banks of a pond with refuse from their sausages and mustard. Everything that was too heavy and no longer necessary the astronauts simply left scattered around the landing module; and in addition there is all manner of scrap metal strewn about on the moon (the now inactive Lunachod, rockets that have made hard or soft landings, etc.). Millions of years after our civilization has ceased to exist and its last traces on earth have turned to dust, the junkyard we have left behind us will remain unchanged on the moon, a sad monument to our advanced civilization. This distresses me not just because I’m essentially a tidy person; the reasons go far deeper: there is in it a rather melancholy symbol. I mention this because my meditations are edging toward—among other things—an analysis of the situation that this symbol illustrates.
(Heřmanice was a labor prison in Ostrava, northern Moravia, where Havel served over 3 1/2 years welding and acetylene torch cutting before being shifted to laundry and scrap metal as his health deteriorated, which eventually led to his release after spiking a serious fever in January 1983.)